“Heads down, my lads!” Cochrane called from the quarterdeck. Besides Cochrane himself, only a dozen men were on deck, all of them Spanish speakers. One of those men was waiting with the furled rebel ensign because, under the rules of war, not a shot could be fired against the enemy till the Espiritu Santo displayed her true colors.
The fort’s defenders, doubtless recognizing the Espiritu Santo as one of their own ships, would be watching the O’Higgins now, measuring their distance, waiting for her hull to clear the headland and thus expose herself to their dreadful fire. Sailors were lining the rails of the American brigantine, drawn there by the great percussive explosions of gunfire that had startled this Chilean dawn. Gulls screamed in the frigate’s broken rigging. Sharpe could smell shellfish and seaweed. He could also smell the smoke from the cooking fires in the fishing hovels beyond the beach, and he thought how different the land smelled from the sea, then he obsessively drew the sword he had borrowed from Lord Cochrane an inch free from its scabbard to make sure that the blade was not stuck. In battle he had known men killed because their swords had rusted into their scabbards. The pumps clattered on the lower deck to spurt discolored bilge water into the silver-gray harbor. One of Miller’s flautists blew three fast and plaintive notes as if checking that his instrument still worked. “Not yet, boys!” Miller said, “Not yet! And when we do attack, boys, I want to hear ‘Heart of Oak’!” He beat time to a tune heard only in his head, then explained to Sharpe that two of his flautists were Chilean and therefore unfamiliar with patriotic British songs. “But I taught ’em, Sharpe, ’pon my soul I taught ’em.” Unable to restrain himself, the Major burst into song.
Come, cheer up, my lads! ’Tis to glory we steer,
To add something more to this wonderful year;
To honor we call you, not press you like slaves,
For who are so free as the sons of the waves?
Heart of oak are our ships!
Heart of oak are our men!
We always are ready! Steady, boys, steady…
“Stop that bloody caterwauling down below!” came a bellow from the quarterdeck.
“A thousand apologies, my Lord!” Miller was mortified to have earned a reproof from his beloved Cochrane.
“Save your dreadful music for the enemy, Miller!” Cochrane was clearly amused by Miller’s singing.
“Whatever you say, my Lord. And I’m much obliged for Your Lordship’s advice!”
“And cheer up, lads!” Cochrane called down to all the hidden men who were nervously waiting for the attack to begin. “There are whores with tits of purest gold ashore! One more hour and we’ll all be drunk, rich and rogered witless!”
Major Miller smiled confidingly at Sharpe. “A great man, our Tommy, a great man! A hero, Sharpe, like yourself. Cut from the old cloth, poured from an antique mold, sprung from ancient seed, clean hewn from solid oak!” Miller, moved by this elaborate encomium, sniffed. “He may be a Scotsman, but at heart there’s English oak there, Sharpe, pure English oak! I’m proud to know him, I am, proud indeed.” Miller looked as if he needed to cuff a tear from his eyes, but his emotional outpouring of loyalty was cut short by an appalling crash of gunfire from the castle ramparts. Heavy roundshot screamed overhead, slashing above the Espiritu Santo’s truncated masts to blast fountains of water close to the pursuing O’Higgins. The Chilean flagship immediately answered with a deafening full broadside.
“God save Ireland,” Harper said, “but I never thought to be in a battle again.”
The Chilean shots cracked against the castle crag, splintering shards of stone, but otherwise doing no damage. Other guns were firing now, lighter guns, cracking their missiles down from the citadel’s highest ramparts. Sharpe imagined the roundshots smashing through the O’Higgins’s hull timbers. God help them, he thought, God help them. So far, at least, the deception had worked and no Spanish guns were firing at the Espiritu Santo; all the dreadful gunnery was aimed at the O’Higgins.
A strange voice called in a lull between the gunshots, and Sharpe, with an apprehensive leap of his heart, realized that the voice must have been calling from somewhere ashore. They were close, so close. A wisp of mist drifted across the wreckage which Cochrane had artfully strewn on the Espiritu Santo’s main deck. The voice called again, and this time a man shouted in answer from the frigate’s bow, explaining that the Espiritu Santo had been in a running fight with the devil Cochrane these last six days, and that the frigate was filled with wounded, but praise God and Saint James they had slaughtered and wounded scores of their enemies and might even have killed that devil Cochrane with their gunnery.
Another terrible crash of gunfire was followed by a horribly familiar rending sound as the great cannonballs ripped the sky apart. Sharpe, looking up through the Espiritu Santo’s tattered rigging, saw the smoke trails of heated shot. “God help the O’Higgins,” he said softly.
“God help us all,” Harper responded. A marine crossed himself. Miller was singing again, though under his breath for fear of offending Cochrane. The men at the pumps faltered for a second, then began their desperate pumping again. Footsteps paced, slow and comforting, on the quarterdeck above.
“Not long now, lads,” Cochrane’s voice called softly. “Think of the waiting whores. Think of the gold! Think of the plunder we’ll take! Not long now!”
The man on the frigate’s beakhead was calling more news ashore. Captain Ardiles was dead, he said, and the First Lieutenant dying. “We have women and children on board!” he called ashore.
“Twenty paces, no more!” Cochrane warned his attackers.
“I pray there’s water under our keel!” Miller said in sudden fear. “God, give us water!” Sharpe had a sudden image of the frigate stranded fifteen paces from land and being pulverized by cannonfire.
“Fifteen paces! Stay hidden now!” Cochrane said.
A marine nervously scraped a sharpening stone down his fixed bayonet. Another felt the edge of his cutlass with his thumb; Sharpe had seen the man do the same thing at least a dozen times in the last minute. Miller took a hugely deep breath, then spat onto the snakeskin handle of his sword. A gust of wind reflected off the citadel’s crag to flog the edge of a sail and spray dew thick as rain down onto the frigate’s deck.
“Ensign!” Cochrane called sharply. “Hoist our colors!”
The Spanish flag rippled down, to be replaced immediately with the new Chilean flag. At the very same moment there was a crash as the frigate’s starboard quarter slammed into the quay.
“Come on!” Cochrane roared. “Come on!”
The assault force was still staggering from the impact of the frigate’s crashing arrival against the quay, but now they pushed themselves upright and, screaming like devils, scrambled into the dawn’s wan light.
Cochrane was already poised on the ship’s rail. The frigate had struck the quay, and was now rebounding. The gap was two paces, three, then Cochrane leaped. Other men were jumping ashore with berthing lines.
“Come on, lads! Music!” Miller’s sword was high in the air.
A seaman had slung a prow ashore to act as a gangplank. A few men jostled to use it, but most men simply leaped to the quay from the frigate’s starboard rail. A flute screeched. A drummer, safely ashore, gave a ripple of sound. A man screamed as he missed his footing and fell into the water.
A cannon fired from the quay’s far end and a ball slashed harmlessly across the quarterdeck, bounced, and ripped out a section of the port gunwale. Sharpe was at the rail now. Christ, but the gap looked huge and beneath him was a churning mass of dirty white water, but men were shouting at him to make way, and so he jumped. The first men ashore were screaming defiance as they ran toward the small battery at the quay’s end where the gunners were desperately trying to slew their guns around to face the sudden enemy. Cannon smoke was blowing across the harbor. The O’Higgins had cleverly taken shelter behind the American brigantine and the Spanish gunners, fearful of bombarding a neutral ship and unable t
o depress their heavy cannons sufficiently to fire down onto the Espiritu Santo, had temporarily ceased fire.
Harper jumped and sprawled on the quay beside Sharpe. He picked himself up and ran toward the stone stairs. Major Miller was already on the steps, climbing as fast as his short legs would carry him. Behind him a mass of men flooded onto the stairway. Fear gave the attack a desperate impetus. A last cannon fired from the quay battery and Sharpe saw one of Miller’s marines torn bloody by the ball’s terrible strike.
Then a musket banged from the citadel high above and the ball flattened itself on the quay. The quay battery was finished, its gunners were either bayonetted or shot, or had jumped into the water. Lord Cochrane, that task successfully completed, was running to the stairs, trying to catch up with Miller’s frantic assault. Sharpe ran with Cochrane, easily outpacing the fat Harper who was struggling behind. “Jesus Christ, but this is wonderful! Oh, God, but this is wonderful! What joy this is!” Cochrane was talking to himself, lost in a heaven of weltering blood and banging gunfire. “Christ, but what a way to live! Isn’t this wonderful? ’Pon my soul, what a morning!” His Lordship elbowed his way through Miller’s rear ranks so he could lead the attack.
The stairs led first to the terrace where the Indian, Ferdinand, had been murdered by the big thirty-six-pounder gun. Three of those guns fired as Sharpe neared the terrace and their muzzle flashes seemed to fill the whole sky with one searing and percussive explosion. The gunners had not fired at any particular target, but had merely emptied their barrels before abandoning the huge weapons. Major Miller and his marines were on the bastion now, but the Spanish gunners were in full flight, leaping off the battery’s far wall to scramble away across the bare rock slope. The iron door of the shot-heating furnace had been left open so that the air above the brick structure shimmered with a dreadful heat.
“Leave them be!” Cochrane roared at the handful of marines who seemed intent on chasing the gunners. “Miller! Up the stairs! Follow me!”
The main battery was captured, but the citadel itself was still in Spanish hands and the hardest part of the attack was yet to be completed. Cochrane, knowing that he had to exploit the surprise he had achieved, was leading a madcap charge up the wider flight of stairs that led into the very heart of the fortress. Once those stairs were climbed the fort must inevitably fall, but Cochrane knew only too well that he needed to reach the summit before the Spaniards recovered from the shock of the attack. The staircase was foully steep and offered an attacker no shelter, so that a handful of determined defenders could hold the stairs for eternity. “Follow! Follow! Follow!” Cochrane, knowing he had only seconds to capture the citadel, roared the word.
“Cochrane!” his men responded, but feebly, for they were out of breath. They had spent too long on board ship and their legs were weak. The assault was slowing down as burning muscles and cramps took their toll.
Then, appallingly, a rank of muskets crashed and flamed from high above the breathless attackers. One of Miller’s marines toppled backward, his mouth full of blood. A seaman screamed, then cartwheeled down the steps to carry two more men away in his helpless tumble. Sharpe saw musket smoke spurting out of the arched windows from where he had watched Ferdinand’s grisly death, then he saw a mighty billow of smoke erupt from the arch at the top of the stairway and he knew that the Spanish had succeeded in posting a company of infantry at the top of the rock-cut stairs, and if those infantrymen were only half good then the Spanish must win.
The infantry was good enough. Its first two volleys were followed by another within just fifteen seconds. Two more marines fell backward. A dozen men had collapsed on the steps; some were dead, some wounded. A drummer was screaming in pain, his hand fluttering on the drumskin to make a grotesque dying music. Cochrane’s gamble, which had depended on reaching the top of the stairs before the Spanish defenders barred the archway, had failed.
“Fire!” Miller shouted, and his men hammered a feeble volley at the musket smoke, but the volley was almost immediately answered by another cracking smack of musket fire. The balls sliced and lashed past Sharpe’s ears. A Corporal was vomiting blood and slipping back down the slope. Miller fired a useless pistol at the defenders, then screamed defiance, but the Spaniards had the best of this fight. Not only were there more of them, but they had the advantage of the high ground. They were well trained, too. The company was rotating its ranks. As soon as the front rank had poured its musketry down into the rebel attack, it stepped back to be replaced by the second rank which, its guns reloaded and ready, added its fire before the third rank stepped forward. They were firing like British infantry used to fire. They had established a murderous rhythm of volleys that would keep firing till the attackers were reduced to twitching, bloody carcasses on the steps. It was volley fire like this that had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo and which now was throwing back Cochrane at Puerto Crucero.
“Down!” Cochrane shouted. “Get down!” The man had the devil’s own luck, for despite being in the front rank, he was unscathed, but his assault was in horrid confusion.
Sharpe had a pistol that he fired at one of the arched windows that lay high to his right. He saw a chip of stone fly off the window ledge. Harper dropped beside Sharpe. “Christ save Ireland,” Harper panted, “but this is desperate!” He leveled his borrowed musket and fired up into the smoke. “I told the wife I’d be doing nothing dangerous. Not a thing, I told her, except the sea voyage, and that never worries her because she’s a great believer in Saint Brendan’s protection, so she is.” All this was spoken while Harper was reloading the musket with a skill that betrayed his years of soldiering. “Jesus, but the money that woman wastes on candles! Christ, I could have lit my way to the shithole of hell and back with all the bloody candles she’s given to the holy saints, but I wished she’d lit a bloody candle to keep me safe in a fight.” He aimed up the steps in the general direction of the smoke cloud and pulled the trigger. “God help us.” He began reloading. “I mean there’s no way out of here, is there? The bloody boat will be hard aground in a minute or two.”
Sharpe saw a man leaning out of a window to fire at the attackers cowering on the steps. He aimed the reloaded pistol and fired, and saw a spurt of blood vivid in the gray morning as the man toppled down the crag’s face. “Got one,” he said happily.
“Good for you.” Harper raised himself and fired over the prone bodies of the marines higher up the steps. A volley smacked down, blasting a chip of stone from the stair beside Sharpe.
“This can’t last!” Sharpe shouted at Harper. He needed to shout for the musketfire was almost continuous now, suggesting that the Spaniards had concentrated even more muskets at the top of the steps. For the defenders this was like shooting rats in a barrel. They would be grinning as they fired, knowing that this day they were defeating the dreaded Lord Cochrane and that all Spain would rejoice when that news reached home. Another volley banged, and the dead bodies which made a protective breastwork for Sharpe and Harper twitched under the flail of lead. “On, my good boys, on!” Miller called, but no one obeyed, for there could be no chance of surviving an uphill attack into that rending, flickering, crashing and unending fire. Any man who tried to climb the stairs would be cut down in seconds, then thrown back to the quay that was already piled with the blood-spattered dead who had rolled down the steps. “Stay down!” Cochrane countermanded Miller’s hopeless order. “Stay low! It’s all going to be well! I’ve a trick or two yet, boys!”
“Jesus, but he needs a bloody trick now,” Harper said, then raised the musket blindly over the parapet of the dead bodies to pull its trigger. “God save Ireland, but we’re dead men unless he can get us out of here.”
Miller shouted at his musicians to play louder, as though their feeble and ragged music could somehow turn back the surging tide of disaster. Some of Miller’s experienced marines, realizing how hopeless was their plight, began to edge backward. There had been a chance of capturing the fortress, even a good chance, but only if
the surprise attack had reached the head of the staircase before the defenders had rallied. But the attackers had failed by yards, and now the Spaniards were grinding Cochrane’s men into blood and bones. More attackers began slipping down the steps. They were looking for possible escape routes around the harbor’s edge.
“Stay there!” Cochrane shouted. “It’s all right, lads! Stay where you are! Wait for it! I promise everything will be well! Heads down now! Heads down! Keep your—” Cochrane’s voice was swamped as the whole world suddenly exploded in noise and stone fragments.
“Christ!” Harper screeched as the citadel’s foundations seemed to shudder with the impact of gunfire.
The O’Higgins, now that the citadel’s main thirty-six-pound battery had been silenced, had sailed out from the unwitting protection offered by the American ship and had anchored with her starboard broadside facing the fortress. She had just fired that full broadside at the defenders bunched at the top of the broad flight of stairs. The volley of cannonfire had been shockingly dangerous to the attackers, but magnificent shooting all the same. At a range of almost a half mile the flagship’s guns were firing just feet over the heads of Cochrane’s attackers. At least one cannonball fell short, for Sharpe saw a marine virtually disintegrate just five steps above him. At one moment the man was aiming his musket, the next there was just a butcher’s mess on the stairs and a crack of murderous intensity as the ball ricocheted on up toward the Spaniards.
“Heads down!” Cochrane called again, and once again the broadside thundered from the Chilean warship. Stone shards, struck from the battlements, sang viciously over Sharpe’s head. This, he remembered from the tales of survivors, was precisely how Wellington had captured San Sebastian. That great fortress, the last French bastion in Spain, had resisted every British attack until, at the very last moment of the very last assault, when the helpless attackers were dying in the great breach as the French garrison poured a murderous fire into the redcoated ranks, Wellington had ordered his siege guns to fire just above the attackers’ heads. The unexpected cannonade, catching the French defenders out of their entrenchments and exposed behind the breach’s makeshift barricades, had turned a glorious French victory into a butcher’s nightmare. The huge roundshot had destroyed the French defenders, blowing them ragged, and a British defeat had turned into sudden triumph. Now Cochrane was trying the exact same trick.